Even some of Hollywood’s most in-demand actresses have to occasionally beg for work. Take Elizabeth Banks. The star of 40-year-old Virgin, W., and Zack and Miri Make a Porno tells me that her upcoming 30 Rock gig resulted from her reaching out to the Emmy-winning comedy and not the other way around. “I definitely put feelers out, like, ‘I would love to be on your show,'” she confesses. “And they did it. They made it happen! I’m a huge fan, so this is a dream come true.”

Banks, who is on board for at least four episodes (the first of which airs in February), plays a right-leaning financial guru who falls for fellow conservative Jack (Alec Baldwin) after he appears as a guest on her CNBC talk show. “She’s basically Sean Hannity in a skirt,” she explains. “What’s great about her relationship with Jack is they’re equals. She’s not some [pretty] young thing that he has a fling with. She really challenges him.”

Despite a string of sitcom appearances — her Rock role follows stints on Modern Family and Scrubs — Banks says she’s “having too much fun making movies” to commit to a TV show full-time. To wit, she just wrapped the Paul Haggis thriller The Next Three Days (she plays Russell Crowe’s incarcerated wife). “The [TV jobs] are a really fun thing to do between movie gigs,” she says. “On Monday I’m hanging out of a car [filming Three Days], and on Tuesday I’m working with two national treasures, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin — not to mention Tracy Morgan.”

And as for Lenny Bruce, by his actions he shed a bit of wdosim on some of America’s shared speech/attitude habits…But he was NEVER a cultural icon I could hold up for emulation, being often a foul-mouthed comedian and social commentator..